Aerial science flights to Greenland recently are improving NASA’s space understanding by measuring radiation risk for air travelers and validing the global radiation maps used in the flight travelers. This unique data also contains value as an astronomical roadmap beyond Earth, which is a celestial roadmap to monitor the level of radiation for passengers entering the atmosphere of Mars and to use the same instrument for upcoming lunar exploration.
NASA’s Space Weather Aviation Radiation (SWXRAD) aircraft flight campaign took place on 25–28 August and organized two five hours of flights to Nuuk, Greenland. Based on NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the mission collected dosimatry measurements, or radiation dosage levels to air travelers from cosmic radiation. The cosmic radiation is caused by high-energy particles from the external space that are away from our sun during events such as solar flarers and distant events, such as our Milky Way Galaxy and beyond Supernova.
“To discover the moon, Mars and beyond the NASA spacecraft and astronauts, we support important research – and eventually guess – the effects of space weather in the solar system,” said Jamie Favors, director of NASA’s space weather program at NASA headquarters in Washington. “Although the project focuses on aviation applications on Earth, Niers may be part of the next generation tools, supporting the Moon Artemis missions and eventually there are human missions on Mars.”
NASA’s aerospace has so far aerospace is the modeling system, or Nyrus, modeling system, which is being extended by SwXRD Airborne Science Flights. The model has real -time global maps of dangerous radiation in the atmosphere and causes exposure predictions for aircraft and spacecraft.
“Radiation exposure due to the effect of the Earth’s magnetic field is maximized at the poles and the minimum at the equator. In polar regions, the magnetic field lines are directed or out of the Earth, so there is no deflection or preservation by the areas of the radiation environment that you see everywhere.” Explained SwXRD chief investigator Chris Martens at NASA Langle. “Greenland is an area where the preservation of cosmic radiation by the magnetic field of the Earth is zero.”
This means that flight crew and travelers are exposed to high levels of radiation on polar flights from America to Asia or America to Europe.
The data collected in Greenland will be compared to Niers modeling, which makes its calculation the basis on sources around the world including neutron monitors and tools that are accompanied by space -detta data from a series of devices such as solar wind parameters and magnetic fields.
“If the new data does not agree, we have to go back and see why it is,” Martens said. “In the radiation environment, one of the greatest uncertainties is the effect of the Earth’s magnetic field. Therefore, it eliminates that variable in the mission model and enables us to focus on other areas, such as marking the particles coming into the atmosphere from space, and then transport and interaction with the atmosphere.”
SwXrad Science Team flew with five researchers and crew members at NASA’s B200 King Air. In the coming months, team measurement data will focus on quality check, quantitative modeling comparison and current nairas data and a verification study between the new aircraft dosimeter measurement.
All this information is trying to save pilots and travelers on Earth from the health risks associated with radiation risks, while NASA’s existing science abilities to bring astronauts on Moon and Mars safely.
“Once you reach Mars and even transit for Mars, there are times where we really have no data set to understand what the environment is there,” favor. “So we are starting to think about how we get ready for those humans for those humans, but also what data we need to bring with them? So we are feeding this data in models like Nair. This model is thinking about Mars in the same way as it is thinking about Earth.”
The SwXRD Flight Mission has been funded through NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Heliophysics Division. NASA’s Space Weather Program Office has been hosted in NASA Langle and facilitates researchers in the creation of new equipment to predict the space season and to understand the influences of space on the Earth’s infrastructure, technology and society.
For more information about NASA Heliopzix and Nyrus modeling trip:
NASA Space Weather
NASA now of aerospace ionizing radiation system
